RISE UP LIKE A SNOW MOUNTAIN, A BOOK SERIES

Every morning the snow mountains will fill up my window before the sun rises. Automobile sounds turn down the volume of night to the minimum, yet the shadows of cherry blossoms will at any moment replace the shadows of time.

Needless to say this window had been taken by the winter but returned to the spring. On the window is a piece of paper that tells fortune, but it will say the same thing whether you poke it or not. On the paper is a small hole of poetry.

And because of this small vent you can see much further than me. You stay remote but faithful to the contradictions around me. In Beijing, I would think toward west when it’s about snow mountains, but here in Kanazawa, I must get used to the east where snow rises.

Every morning I see from the window the mountain range that slowly raises its flag, and then the sun will take its turn to climb the ridge of the snow mountains while its golden needles stab the nerves of all.

ZANG Di

ZANG Di (pseudonym of ZANG Li), born 1964, is a lecturer in Chinese Literature in Beijing is counted as one of China’s best contemporary poets. He has published books of poetry and edited several influential anthologies, translations and poetry magazines.

His work combines Chinese and international literary and cultural traditions in an ingenious way. His complex, multi-layered texts are frequently described as avant-garde poetry. He was in fact one of the first Chinese poets to turn away both from the sentimentalist tradition and the open social criticism of 90s poetry in China and take a more experimental postmodern approach. With great technical skill, associative ease and astounding wordplays, he probes the limits of language. This combination of dry tone, complexity of thought and humour has made ZANG Di an inspiration in China for a whole generation of young poets. Although he has won many prizes in China for his work, he is still too little known internationally.